1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to color matching and more particularly to a method of visually displaying a color deviation of an actual color.
2. Description of Related Art
Modern vehicles, such as automobiles, typically are offered to consumers in a wide variety of paint colors. In fact, from model year to model year, it is not uncommon for a particular vehicle model to be available in several paint colors. Variations in the color and appearance of the paint color may arise from a number of factors including changes in paint formulation, effect degradation, paint and stability, and changes in the application conditions or equipment. Color changes brought about by environmental degradation of the coating may also take place.
Due to the variations in paint color it can be difficult to match the color of a vehicle during a repair of the vehicle. One refinish formula typically does not work for all vehicles of a given color code. For example, when a vehicle's body panels are damaged and require repainting, a refinish paint supplier must take into consideration variations in paint color and will therefore supply one or more paint formulations to the repair shop. By supplying a number of formulations or variants for a particular color, the paint manufacturer accounts for the paint color variations which may affect the actual color of the vehicle. Typically, the formulations for a particular color are distributed to the repair shops on paper, microfiche, compact disc, or over the internet. A color tool, composed of swatches of the variants for each color, may also be produced and delivered to each repair shop.
The repair shop then selects which formulation most closely matches the part to be painted. Typically this is done visually, i.e., by comparing swatches to the part or spaying a test piece with each formulation. The repair shop may then modify the selected formula by manually tinting the paint formula.
Several difficulties arise from these prior art approaches. Commonly a large number of variants are derived to properly characterize the color population. This is a difficult and time consuming task for the paint supplier to produce these variant formulas. Public showing of the variant formulas is also problematic as there is no convenient way for a repair shop technician to locate the best formula for the particular repair job. Often the paint technician uses a reference to aid in selecting the proper variant formula. Such a reference might be a spray out of the selected formula. Frequently, due to an insufficient number of variant formulas or difficulty in identifying the proper variant, the paint technician is forced to try to adequately tint the paint formula to match the actual color of the vehicle being repaired.
In order to expedite the process of variant selection, the paint supplier may provide the paint technician with color tools which are physical representations of the reference and variant colors. There are however limitations associated with these tools. Introducing a sufficient number of variant colors makes the tools unwieldy and expensive. Additionally, the time from variant identification to production and updating the customer's tool is significant. Color tools also have a limited life span. The color tools are typically color plates which can become worn and damaged with time.
Another option for variant selection is to use a spectrophotometer. This device however is costly, requires substantial customer training, and currently does no quantify the coarseness or sparkle of the finish. These instruments are also rather fragile and can be adversely affected by the repair shop environment.
Accordingly, it will be desirable to develop a method or system for determining a color match and locating a corresponding paint formulation that is relatively easy to use, is of low cost, can produce a large number of variants, and does not suffer from the prior art approaches outlined above.